Month: January 2006

This has been occupying a lot of my time the past few days. Beautifully done game, basically an old-skool war strategy game. Some extra features compared to the older GBA version, but overall the same basic gameplay. Improved massively with being able to use the stylus, and move all your troops around very easily. A lot of time could be potentially spent on it.

One of the many things I like about it are the icons that symbolise the different kinds of army units. They are like little chess pieces, carefully drawn and thought-through. After a few hours play each is burned in your memory.

Partly because it was, nearly six weeks ago. Feel slightly more solvent now, which is no bad thing. Good weekend due to it, quiet one with a little drink out at the start of it with mrsfb on Friday, and plenty of junk tv, then a double night out on Saturday, my departments christmas do (don’t ask) and a friend of mrsfb’s birthday drinks. Just about fitted it all in, wasn’t sure if we would quite survive it all, but we got there, manfully (and womanfully of course)

Finished reading a geek book. Read some more Vernon God Little. Re-cabled the pc. Tidied up all the stuff that had fallen down the back of the pc. Helped someone set up a blog. Set up my new mobile properly. Sorted out some little jobs too. Not a bad evenings work really.

New mobile is well good. Nokia 6630, does video calling, which would be great if I knew anyone else with it. Does do photos and lots of online stuff well, which is all good. May well end up using the Flickr account (which is what provides the photos on the right-hand side of the blog) a bit more now I can take photos that don’t look anywhere near as blurred.

Didn’t necessarily achieve much this weekend. Did tidy up our place some, manage a long walk, but mainly about relaxing. Which is good. I think my main aim for this week is to get back on with some reading. Have started the first Vernon God Little book (okay, the only one thus far) and have enjoyed it, but need to get into it a bit more. May set up on the sofa tonight and plough through it. Have managed quite well last week at getting into my tech books, but need some balance to keep me vaguely sane.

Mr Wonderduck has pointed out in comments to a previous post that he does not have broadband. This makes me sad, as it has totally changed my internet experience. I think I have had it for roughly 5 years now, and I just can’t imagine being without. Actually I can, I remember all the time before, and the shock of using dial-up very occasionally at other friends houses. It isn’t perfect yet, could be far far faster and cheaper, but tonight when I get home I am going to kiss my cable modem and be thankful for what I have got.

Well I was thinking on the bus into work today, I’ve been listening to podcasts on my iPod for nearly a year now, and was wondering what I have stuck with. I’ve tried a lot of different ones, but there are only a few that I have really been taken with.

The podfather. It isn’t to everyone’s tastes, but it is a nice cross between proper radio show and audio blog, and keeps you up to date on the podcast community and tech stuff as a whole. And he is a good presenter.

Very odd and highly idiosyncratic pair of podcasts from a team of New York geeks. They are both shows that originate on Public Broadcast Radio, and have quite a loose feel to them. The former is essentially from a team of old school phone hackers, that have moved onto bigger and greater things. The latter is almost an audio blog for Emmanuel Bernstein, who is part of the Off the Hook show, and follows his interests and travels. Both shows have an admirable attitude to the rights of the individual, and the dangers of the encroachment of big business and government on those rights. Whilst they are clearly very American in some ways, their beliefs and attitudes are much more global, and they are often refreshing voices of sanity to hear with an American accent.

A simple podcast of a BBC Radio 5 show, but one of the funniest sports shows in existence. Not on every week of the year, which is a crying shame.

Webtalk Radio

Quite the geekcast, a small round table discussion of current web stories. Goes into a hell of a lot of depth, whilst not being overly complicated.

A good place to start looking, other than iTunes (which I have to admit is a sod to navigate for podcasts) is Indiepodder.org. Now I am told, and am going to try this tonight, you can drag the link for an rss feed containing podcasts directly into iTunes. Will report on this later.

Trying to create an RSS feed for the site at the moment. If you subscribe to this site using a feed reader (I know at least two people do, and one of them isn’t me), it is using Atom rather than RSS. This is more practice for myself in such dark arts. I’ll chuck up an RSS logo once it is sorted.

Saw some mates for a good drink on Friday night, then a quiet one in with mrsfb on Saturday. We caught up on the end of Lost (The first series) which was great and unsatisfying all at once. Then again not finding things out is part of the joy of Lost. Also watched some Shameless, and taped the movie Ping Pong, which I have heard good things about.